


Auf Kurs [On Course]

by steelneena



Series: CR 2 Oneshots [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, I ship it but there's no actual relationship content to be found here, Some angst, and lots of sensory exploration, but you can definitely read it that way because hell yeah, general bewilderment, look - Freeform, some wonderment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 01:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15595368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Everything Old is New Again...





	Auf Kurs [On Course]

**Author's Note:**

> consider this an experiment

He knows the feel of moonlight. It was a barely there caress against his face as he broke the surface. The velveteen blanket of night not nearly as oppressive as the suffocating stench of the earth as it had crowded his senses, filling his nose, his eyes, his ears. The moons are cool and soothing, the moons are gentle and loving. Dirt clings to his hair, his skin; it’s on his tongue and under his claws but he feels bare, the chill breeze sweeping the tangled strands back, jingling chains and gems he didn’t know were there.

He knows the feel of moonlight. It’s instinctual, somehow, to love it, to bask in it and feel tender affection. He knows that it loves him in return, a semi-sentient gleam watching him from above as he rose from below. His hands rest on the hardened crust of ground, hoarfrost melting beneath his palms, the withered vestiges of vegetation crackling piteously under the weight as he presses himself up, the thick tapestry sliding from his shoulders as he does, leaving him exposed physically.

He shivers.

He knows the feel of moonlight, but that’s all he knows, it seems to him, as he looks around at surroundings, unfamiliar. Two low hills rise on either side of him, a felled tree laying forlorn not far from him, small scrub brush blowing brittle against the wind, faint white flakes floating down in lazy spirals from the open endless sky above, small pockets of clouds a pitiless void in the night. He steps from the hole in the ground, shallow, filled now with only dirt and finely woven silken strands gleaming silver in the low light.

He knows the feel of moonlight, but not the harsh whip of _something_ against his back. He turns, slow and curious, to see the fluttering shape hung on a well-placed stick at the head of his hole-in-the-ground and he reaches out to grasp at the languorously waving swatch of fabric. It’s not coarse, nor soft, but a pleasant texture and he pulls it to him. Easily it slides from it’s stand and into his hands, a limp, lifeless thing covered in pretty threads in swirling patterns and mysterious iconography. There are two shorter, separate sections and he puts a hand through one, experimentally. It slides up and over his shoulder, hands down in the back.

He knows the feel of moonlight, and now, as he slips the other arm through, the feel of warmth, at least warmth relative to the chill he’d experienced in only his thin shirt. The garment fits him, and he knows too a feeling of _rightness_ that he can’t explain. He climbs out of his shallow hole-in-the-ground and stands there, just to the side, and turns in a slow circle, taking in the details as his eyes adjust. He can see a lot, despite the deep dark; it’s hardly a bother and he doesn’t think anything of it. In the pale gleam of the moons, he puts his hands out in front of him and looks at them, curious, and then lifts them to his face, palms coming to rest flat on warming cheeks, fingers sliding up, threading into thick, soft curls and stopping at the protrusion of something hard before skimming up and over and spiraling out over his newly discovered horns, the pads of his fingers sliding over the mysterious shapes of varying studs, rings, and dangles, hard and cool.

He blinks.

He knows the feel of moonlight, but his first step forward is into the unknown, a compulsion born of ignorance begetting him to move; each step is sure, and he feels something akin to surprise – a vestige of something missing, something lacking, something that is _not quite right_ and he shakes, not from cold this time. Hot trails streak down his face and they surprise him out of his abrupt fear, as he lifts a finger to press against the new sensation.

Suddenly, the world is large and looming around him and he shudders, minute abortive tremors that course through his whole body. He _feels_ now, and it’s overwhelming, the sensation of being thin and frail and so, so small in the vastness that stretches out around him now that he’d passed the shelter of the hills. An wide swath bathed in white, the barren fields a luminescent sheen of pearl surrounded by growing black shapes on the far horizons, jagged and imposing.

The feel of moonlight takes an edge in that moment, one that’s not so welcoming, but neither is it sinister. Instead, he feels…

_Empty._

A cold, hollow sensation settles in his gut, and he falls to his knees, weeping without knowing why.

_Empty._

_Empty._

_Empty._

* * *

Morning crests over the hilltops, warm and inviting. As his eyes open, the first thing he sees in more dirt. The ground is by his face, and he sits up, coming to realize that somewhere along the line, time passed and the world is now an explosion of colours. He’s never seen colour, at least, not that he can remember, nor felt the sun. The overwhelming sensations of the night prior seem dull in the bright morning glow, revealing all manner of new and vivid sights and it’s a whole different manner of wonderment, a distinctly better manner. He is sitting now and he lets his hand down to drift over the fading green tips of grassy sprigs that have sprung up in haphazard manner. They feel spiky and ticklish and a sound falls from his lips. Startled by the noise, he falls backwards, head hitting the ground with a soft thunk and the friendly pale blue of the sky opens up over him, puffs of clouds dotting the viewscape, and he completely forgets the sensation of laughter, ao newly discovered, vibrations bubbling up from his stomach to his throat, enraptured instead by the fact that the clouds move across the sky which last night had felt so foreboding.

He feels so much, so fast, so differently that he just lays there, breathing, and listening to his breathing, because the day is quiet and it is by far the loudest sound he can hear. He puts a hand on his chest and notices that it lifts in tandem with his inhales and exhales and it is absolutely novel. Time passes, for the sun is much higher by the time his amusement with this new knowledge dissipates. He lifts a hand to reach for one of the passing black shapes that flits below the clouds, a blur of speed, and takes in, for the first time, the colour of his hand, which is unlike anything else and so, sits up and looks down at himself. The garment he pulled on the night before is bright too, and different and he likes it, he likes everything about it. It feels familiar in a way that nothing else but the moon has, even more so now that he can really see it, see the colours of it and not just the greyscale.

And then there’s another sound from one of the flying streaks across the sky and he’s startled again into falling back into the grass and he stays there, some of the uncertainty from before creeping back into him as the rest of the natural world begins to wake. There is no moonlight to feel familiar with, so he pulls the garment around him tightly, eyes wide and ears alert, pressing himself as flat to the ground as possible out of some latent reflex.

The sun is even higher the next time he hears a noise. A rhythmic clopping and a rickety creaking but he doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare look. Then, more sounds, ones that have more form than that which came from within him once, but seem to be from a similar origin. He’s shaking again, unable to push away the strange discomfort, even as the sounds escalate and suddenly there’s a loud cry and everything stops until the rhythmic sound on the ground has changed from a _clop-clop-clop-clop_ to a _thump-thump._

A colour pierces his vision, vibrant like his skin, but clear as crystal, a deeper shade of the sky and sparkling, curtained in glorious auburn and a hand – he recognizes it because he’s seen his own hands – but a pale shade of cream is reaching for his face and he stares, rendered utterly ummobile. The person above him moves his mouth and a sound, one with form, comes out.

“Mollymauk?”

He has felt the chill and the warm, and felt the dirt and the wet and the grass and the sun and the wind. He has felt comfort and disease and shock and pleasure and fear. But he knew the moon. And as he knew the feel of the moon, he knows the sound of this word, from this mouth and all the tension rushes out of him and he blinks, one hand raising up to touch the swath of orange. It’s soft. Finer than his own thick mane, but matted and tangled.

The sounds comes again. “Mollymauk?”

He knows it, feels the fact acutely in his gut somewhere, like a throbbing stab of something that’s like the way the sun feels on his skin, and like the way his chest feels when he looks at the moon, or the way his head feels at each new discovery.

He opens his mouth, because he _knows_ the word, he _does_ , but it’s gone in a flash and something inside him is crushed; it reminds him of reaching for the cloud, grasping and grasping and catching nothing.

He opens his mouth.

“Empty.”

He knows this one word the way he knows the feel of moonlight. His eyes burn with frustration, because, yes, that word he knows. It’s the word for how his head feels and for the nothingness on the open plain and the sinking sensation in his stomach.

“Empty.”

The eyes look back at him.

“No. Never that, Mollymauk. Never that.” The hand presses to his cheek and the sensation is different from when he imitated it the night before. Electric and soft. “Full.” The person says. “You are so full.”

And the words, though they mean little, warm him more than the sun, and comfort him better than the moon and he sinks into the touch.

“Full.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> written to Auf Kurs by OOMPH! because it seemed appropriate.


End file.
